Car Sharing in the Age of Social Media

Living in a major city? Need to run errands? Then you’ve most likely heard of Car2Go, Enterprise CarShare, Getaround, or even ZipCar.

These companies are reinventing the way we utilize transportation. Instead of a bike or the metro, these vehicles are parked conveniently around town, allowing users to take a ride for an affordable price at any time of the day.

The question remains: where did these vehicles come from and how did they suddenly leverage support and visibility to the consumer world?

Social media and news coverage are largely given credit.

A recent case study notes that car sharing has a 91 percent overall positive talk in social media. Not to mention, overall conversations about car sharing produced 50,896 total mentions with news and twitter being the most prominent sources of mentions.

The new digital age of sharing, mentioning, commenting, liking and forwarding has made consumer interest stronger.

Zipcar UK is known for their ability to increase visits to their site with their utilization of self web-hosted campaigns. In fact, Social Media Today writer Jim Belosic explains that ZipCar built a “really successful web-hosted campaign, in part because they saw their organic Facebook reach was dwindling.”

On top of this, car sharing companies have been able to utilize Google Analytics to track site visits, keeping tabs on the amount of individuals who view and enter their promotion initiatives.

Another way these car brands are making their mark is through free news coverage. While social campaigns and website-hosted promotions cost money, getting covered by news outlets allows corporations to leverage support and increase their influence without even trying.

Check out these three articles for proof that these car sharing corporations have made the headlines of tech and money media on outlets such as CNN and BBC, which inherently increases their visibility to the consumer world.

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Samantha Julia Ross is a student at the George Washington University class of 2021. Samantha is actively involved in the Debate and Literary Society, GW Hillel as Shabbat Co-Chair, and Progressive Student Union. She is also Social Media Coordinator for the School of Media and Public Affairs and has interned on Capitol Hill for Representative Jacky Rosen (NV-3). Samantha is originally from Las Vegas, Nevada, and in her free time, she enjoys playing piano, singing, sketching, or going for a run. She also is a current dog walker for Wag!, an app for paid dog walking services.